Sources

Manuscript sources

London, Lambeth Palace, MS Carew 596. (This is the only MS copy of the poem. It is acephalous, has some lacunae, and ends imperfect; for a description of the MS see Orpen, 1892 (cited below) xixii and Conlon, 1992 (cited below) viixi).

Goddard Henry Orpen, The song of Dermot and the Earl: an Old French poem from the Carew manuscript no. 596 in the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth Palace (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1892). Diplomatic edition with a preface, introduction, chronological table, two genealogical tables (of Mac Murchada and the descendants of Nesta), a facsimile of folio 7ra (i.e. page 13) of the manuscript, a literal translation, an apparatus, copious historical notes (254321), a heavily annotated coloured map of Meath and Leinster, and index locorum, an index nominum, and a glossary (339355). Two extracts from Orpen's edition (lines 26695, 34669) are reprinted with Orpen's translation in Seamus Deane (ed), The Field Day anthology of Irish writing i (Derry 1991) 14950.

Evelyn Mullally, The deeds of the Normans in Ireland: La geste des Engleis en yrlande: a new edition of the chronicle formerly
known as The Song of Dermot and the Earl. (Dublin: Four Courts, 2002).

Translations

Denis J. Conlon (cited above).

Goddard Henry Orpen (cited above).

Evelyn Mullally (cited above).

Sources, comment on the text, and secondary literature

Alexander Bell, 'Notes on "The Song of Dermot" ' The Modern Language Review 68.2 (Apr. 1973) 283291.

Alan Bliss and Joseph Long, Literature in Norman French and English to 1534, in Art Cosgrove (ed), A New History of Ireland ii (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987) 70836.

Encoding

Project Description

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Sampling Declaration

The editorial preface and introduction are retained. Notes to the text, indexes and glossary have been omitted. All editorial corrections and emendations (whether by Orpen or others) have been retained and fully tagged.

Editorial Declaration

Correction

Text has been checked, proof-read three times, and parsed using NSGMLS. This text is complex, textually and historically, and there are many unresolved problems. Codicological, textual and bibliographical corrections and suggestions are welcome and will be credited to the scholars who make them.

Normalization

The text has been prepared as medieval French is now presented to readers: modern punctuation has been added, words have been divided in accordance with current editorial principles. The cedilla and e-acute have been marked where appropriate; consonantal i and u (the use of u and v in the MS is somewhat arbitrary) have been rendered j and v, and diaeresis has been marked. Orpen prints manuscript expansions in italics and reproduces the manuscript's y with an overdot: these features have not been retained. The text is based on that of Orpen and compared with that of Denis J. Conlon (which edition has been of great value to us). All editorial corrections and emendations have been tagged.

Quotation

There are no quotations marks in the manuscript. Quotation marks in the edition have not been retained. Quoted speech in the text is contextually self-evident.

Hyphenation

Soft hyphens are silently removed. When a hyphenated word (hard or soft) crosses a page-break or line-break, the page-break and line-break are marked after the completion of the hyphenated word.

Segmentation

div0=the whole text; div1=the poem. Metrical lines are numbered. Verse paragraphs (unnumbered in Orpen's edition, numbered in Conlon's) are numbered and tagged in this edition. The manuscript folio and pages have been tagged in two separate series; the pages of Orpen's and Conlon's editions have been tagged in two separate series: pb n="" marks Orpen's pagination; mls unit="DJCpage" n="" marks Conlon's pagination. The lineation of the poem, identical in both editions, has been tagged.

Interpretation

All personal, place and group names (i. e. dynasties, peoples etc.) have been tagged. A regularised Irish form (and for some major sites, an English form) has been supplied in the tags, except in a few cases where the identity of persons or places is very uncertain. Occupations and social roles (abbot, archbishop, archer, baron, bishop, canon, duke, earl, empress, hostage, king, knight, lord, marcher lord, monk, prior, queen, saint) and some other terms (abbey, castle, archbishopric) have been tagged.
Dates and numbers are tagged.

Canonical References

The n attribute of each text in this corpus carries a unique identifying number for the whole text.

The title of the text is held as the first head element within each text.

div0 is reserved for the whole text (whether in one volume or many).

The numbered lines provide a canonical reference.

Profile Description

Created: By an unknown Irish Norman-French poet, drawing on materials that go back to Maurice Regan, the latimer (Latin secretary) of
Diarmait Mac Murchada (ob. 1171), king of Leinster.
Date range: 1200-1225.